If I were to tell you “a great deal of American television is dedicated to portraying the glories of capitalism and tearing down anything that looks like an alternative system” you would probably say “thank you, that’s the most obvious thing I’ve ever heard.” All the same, the third season of Netflix’s Stranger Things merits special mention, since it takes the love of all things corporate to a supersized extreme. Product placement crawls across the screen, more frightening and insidious than this season’s body-snatching monsters. A legion of “Evil Russians” (they are literally referred to as “Evil Russians”) builds a gigantic evil laboratory under a good, law-abiding, honest American mall. A 10-year-old Black girl gives the following unlikely speech: “Know what I love most about this country? Capitalism. Do you know what capitalism is?…It means this is a free market system. Which means people get paid for their services depending on how valuable their contributions are.” Stranger Things has always been a Reagan-era nostalgia-fest, but generally through its popcorn-movie source material rather than as a hammy reimagining of the time period itself. There’s no hint whatsoever of acid irony or critique: Watching the third season of Stranger Things is the equivalent of bathing in the undesired sugariness of New Coke.
So you may be surprised to learn that the very same Netflix that brought us The Plucky Mallrats vs. the Red Menace has also created a show called The Society, in which a group of stranded teenagers—with hope, fear, clumsy wonder, and a lot of mistakes—explicitly, directly, textually, try to do socialism. I mean it: They actually say the word “socialism” and it’s presented as something quite positive.
How can these two shows exist on the same streaming service? I suppose The Society is simply being paid for the value of its contributions to art. That being said, The Society is only a good show, not a great one; for starters, the title is too vague, and guaranteed to get buried in Netflix’s black-box algorithmic rankings, even though Get In Losers, We’re Doing Socialism was a perfectly available choice.
So how do the teens come to embrace socialism? It’s not, alas, through a student revolution planned in the cafeteria, but through a series of mysterious occurrences. First, a weird smell pervades a small upscale Connecticut town. Then the local teens are all bussed away for an overnight school trip. The trip is suddenly canceled; the teens are turned back and dropped off in the town square, only to find that everyone else is gone. No parents, no teachers, no younger siblings, no grandparents. The town is deserted except for the teens. All roads and train tracks heading out of town now end in a massive, eerie wood crawling with snakes. There’s still electricity and water—for now—and cell service, but the characters can only reach each other, not the internet or the outside world. Where are they? Is it a parallel universe? Why is all this happening? Who has done this to them? These questions are not fully answered in the first season, and they’re ultimately unimportant. In the tradition of what’s commonly called “soft” science fiction, The Society is a thought experiment about power, gender, and civilization, with the mysterious premise serving mostly as a backdrop and a framing device.
Here’s our thought experiment: What would happen if a bunch of mostly affluent Connecticut teenagers were suddenly forced to form their own society? On the opening night in their strange new town, the teens—not yet realizing that everyone else is gone forever—throw a dance party in the empty church. But once the full reality of their situation sinks in, there’s lots of moping about and missing their parents. As boring as this is, it’s appropriately realistic. These aren’t just any kids, but the children of the upper middle class in a New York City commuter town (as one character says: “everyone’s parents are lawyers. It’s like a zoning requirement or something.”) With a few exceptions, these high schoolers are bound for Ivy League universities and private liberal arts colleges. They don’t really know how to let loose and have real fun, because they haven’t been raised to have a good time. They’ve been bred as room-meat for the professional-managerial class order, which has suddenly vanished along with their parents.
The sudden lack of social expectations throws them completely off-balance.
Cassandra, the student body president, initially attempts to instill a sense of social responsibility and communal effort. “There’s no civilization here, not until we start one,” she says. “So what are we going to do? First, I think we have no choice but to share. Share food. Share resources.” She’s joined in this effort by the only working-class character, the biracial orphan Will; and virulently opposed by the rich kids, led by the outrageously wealthy Harry and Cassandra’s own sociopathic cousin Campbell. Harry and Campbell’s position boils down to “keep what’s ours”—that is, hold on to their private property (even in the absence of their parents or any other governing authority) at all costs. Harry, in an effort to impress his estranged girlfriend Kelly and convince her of the rightness of his ideology, shows her a stack of gold bars that his father put in a safe “in case things go to shit…You can’t trust anybody. All you can do is have an advantage, and this is mine.” Kelly, skeptically eyeing a gold bar, replies, “It’s just a chunk of metal, Harry. I don’t think that’s gonna matter now.”
At first, most of the teens follow Harry and Campbell’s example, and anarcho-capitalism reigns supreme, with everyone just hoarding and hiding while the trash accumulates behind their houses. But 10 days of chaos culminate in a violent, drunken riot, with smashed windows and burned-out cars. Almost all the perpetrators are boys. The next day, Cassandra gathers the girls and organizes them into a socialist feminist liberation front. “Right now it’s just pillage, but how long until someone’s raped walking home one night and no one gives a shit because that’s just how it is?” Cassandra argues. “Women aren’t safe in a world that’s run by brute force and stupidity. If we want peace, we need order. And to get order, we need to exert our power.” From this moment follows a delightful series of scenes, cutting from conversation to conversation across town, in which different groups of girls organize, recognizing their power (“We’re like, half the town. Women. More than half, I think. I mean, if we all just said ‘stuff needs to change’, would they be able to say no?”) and discussing how to convince their boyfriends.
Interestingly, however, these grassroots feminist organizers are not the first characters on the show to directly say the forbidden word “socialism”: that comes out of the innocent mouths of the jocks.
The jocks are easily the funniest characters in the show: I’ve transcribed their conversation in full, because it’s great.
JASON:
I’ve been thinking. What if we like, didn’t… take stuff? Like food or whatever? Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, right? Sharing? It could be like… socialism. There’s no “I” in team, right?
CLARK:
Erika give you that talk?
JASON:
CLARK:
LUKE:
Well, it’s not like it worked in China. Socialism…
JASON:
It kind of worked. Everything’s made in China.
GRIZZ (THE SMART ONE):
China’s a poor example. The party took complete priority over the workers. In reality, we’ve never seen a true socialist state.
CLARK:
Maybe all the Chinese women said they wouldn’t put out unless the men got on board.
JASON (WITH HORROR):
Gwen said that TOO?
(Jason, Clark, and Luke all take a moment to realize they are being Lysistrated).
LUKE (AFTER A PAUSE):
Well, socialism it is.
Letting the silly jocks introduce socialism by name, and agree to it reluctantly in exchange for sex—rather than having the earnest, organized girls declare themselves openly and seriously in favor of socialism—feels like a deliberate narrative choice, and if it is, it’s a clever one. Introducing socialism in an offhanded, funny way makes the concept more palatable to an audience that’s been wired by decades of propaganda to see socialism as inherently dangerous and doomed. The script even brings up the classic “what about China/Venezuela/the Soviet Union” canard, but then allows it to be shot down by the well-read Grizz. This is simply not done on mainstream American television, or at least quite rarely. (...)
Time and again, the teens are portrayed as kids who are just trying to do what’s right, despite the evils they’ve inherited, and the general lack of creative solutions available to them from the old world. A review in Variety insists that “despite—or maybe thanks to—their best efforts, [the teens’] attempts to make a revolutionary new order end up looking an awful lot like the more rigid, heteronormative one in which they all grew up.” This is of course, exactly the point—it is very difficult for the teens to shed the awful attitudes they’ve been raised with. Grizz, who finally comes out as gay, says to Sam, his semi-closeted sort-of boyfriend, “We might be in a new fucking universe and we also might starve in here. How do you want to live, Sam?” He’s referring to their sexuality, but also of course to the entire situation; the teens have arrived in a new world, and they can make choices. Those choices are constrained by the history of the old world they brought with them, but at the same time, they can still choose how they want to live.
The repeat misunderstandings of the show’s depth by its critics are not surprising: Its political orientation is atypical, plus its admitted aesthetic flaws (too many characters, frequently portentous dialogue, a slow second half) obscure a lot of its real thoughtfulness and originality. What The Society is trying to do is fundamentally hard. It’s asking a question many people are asking themselves right now in a time of frightening upheaval: How do we want to live? And it’s asking it in the context of emergency. The teens have arrived in a strange, unknowable world that could hurt them suddenly and inexplicably. In the longer term, their resources are also running out. The feeling of living in a familiar place suddenly turned dangerous and mysterious is a clear echo of climate change anxiety; by the end of the season, the teens have realized they will probably have to transform from comfortable house-dwelling suburbanites into grubby farmers. Their lives are going to be difficult, physically taxing, and utterly different from the ones their parents led. Judging by the current dire climate predictions and the difficulty of halting global capitalism’s runaway carbon emissions, this is probably going to be the case for our real-world teens also.
So you may be surprised to learn that the very same Netflix that brought us The Plucky Mallrats vs. the Red Menace has also created a show called The Society, in which a group of stranded teenagers—with hope, fear, clumsy wonder, and a lot of mistakes—explicitly, directly, textually, try to do socialism. I mean it: They actually say the word “socialism” and it’s presented as something quite positive.
How can these two shows exist on the same streaming service? I suppose The Society is simply being paid for the value of its contributions to art. That being said, The Society is only a good show, not a great one; for starters, the title is too vague, and guaranteed to get buried in Netflix’s black-box algorithmic rankings, even though Get In Losers, We’re Doing Socialism was a perfectly available choice.So how do the teens come to embrace socialism? It’s not, alas, through a student revolution planned in the cafeteria, but through a series of mysterious occurrences. First, a weird smell pervades a small upscale Connecticut town. Then the local teens are all bussed away for an overnight school trip. The trip is suddenly canceled; the teens are turned back and dropped off in the town square, only to find that everyone else is gone. No parents, no teachers, no younger siblings, no grandparents. The town is deserted except for the teens. All roads and train tracks heading out of town now end in a massive, eerie wood crawling with snakes. There’s still electricity and water—for now—and cell service, but the characters can only reach each other, not the internet or the outside world. Where are they? Is it a parallel universe? Why is all this happening? Who has done this to them? These questions are not fully answered in the first season, and they’re ultimately unimportant. In the tradition of what’s commonly called “soft” science fiction, The Society is a thought experiment about power, gender, and civilization, with the mysterious premise serving mostly as a backdrop and a framing device.
Here’s our thought experiment: What would happen if a bunch of mostly affluent Connecticut teenagers were suddenly forced to form their own society? On the opening night in their strange new town, the teens—not yet realizing that everyone else is gone forever—throw a dance party in the empty church. But once the full reality of their situation sinks in, there’s lots of moping about and missing their parents. As boring as this is, it’s appropriately realistic. These aren’t just any kids, but the children of the upper middle class in a New York City commuter town (as one character says: “everyone’s parents are lawyers. It’s like a zoning requirement or something.”) With a few exceptions, these high schoolers are bound for Ivy League universities and private liberal arts colleges. They don’t really know how to let loose and have real fun, because they haven’t been raised to have a good time. They’ve been bred as room-meat for the professional-managerial class order, which has suddenly vanished along with their parents.
The sudden lack of social expectations throws them completely off-balance.
Cassandra, the student body president, initially attempts to instill a sense of social responsibility and communal effort. “There’s no civilization here, not until we start one,” she says. “So what are we going to do? First, I think we have no choice but to share. Share food. Share resources.” She’s joined in this effort by the only working-class character, the biracial orphan Will; and virulently opposed by the rich kids, led by the outrageously wealthy Harry and Cassandra’s own sociopathic cousin Campbell. Harry and Campbell’s position boils down to “keep what’s ours”—that is, hold on to their private property (even in the absence of their parents or any other governing authority) at all costs. Harry, in an effort to impress his estranged girlfriend Kelly and convince her of the rightness of his ideology, shows her a stack of gold bars that his father put in a safe “in case things go to shit…You can’t trust anybody. All you can do is have an advantage, and this is mine.” Kelly, skeptically eyeing a gold bar, replies, “It’s just a chunk of metal, Harry. I don’t think that’s gonna matter now.”
At first, most of the teens follow Harry and Campbell’s example, and anarcho-capitalism reigns supreme, with everyone just hoarding and hiding while the trash accumulates behind their houses. But 10 days of chaos culminate in a violent, drunken riot, with smashed windows and burned-out cars. Almost all the perpetrators are boys. The next day, Cassandra gathers the girls and organizes them into a socialist feminist liberation front. “Right now it’s just pillage, but how long until someone’s raped walking home one night and no one gives a shit because that’s just how it is?” Cassandra argues. “Women aren’t safe in a world that’s run by brute force and stupidity. If we want peace, we need order. And to get order, we need to exert our power.” From this moment follows a delightful series of scenes, cutting from conversation to conversation across town, in which different groups of girls organize, recognizing their power (“We’re like, half the town. Women. More than half, I think. I mean, if we all just said ‘stuff needs to change’, would they be able to say no?”) and discussing how to convince their boyfriends.
Interestingly, however, these grassroots feminist organizers are not the first characters on the show to directly say the forbidden word “socialism”: that comes out of the innocent mouths of the jocks.
The jocks are easily the funniest characters in the show: I’ve transcribed their conversation in full, because it’s great.
JASON:
I’ve been thinking. What if we like, didn’t… take stuff? Like food or whatever? Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, right? Sharing? It could be like… socialism. There’s no “I” in team, right?
CLARK:
Erika give you that talk?
JASON:
… no.
CLARK:
Oh really? ’Cause Gwen said that exact shit to me last night. Lukey?
LUKE:
Well, it’s not like it worked in China. Socialism…
JASON:
It kind of worked. Everything’s made in China.
GRIZZ (THE SMART ONE):
China’s a poor example. The party took complete priority over the workers. In reality, we’ve never seen a true socialist state.
CLARK:
Maybe all the Chinese women said they wouldn’t put out unless the men got on board.
JASON (WITH HORROR):
Gwen said that TOO?
(Jason, Clark, and Luke all take a moment to realize they are being Lysistrated).
LUKE (AFTER A PAUSE):
Well, socialism it is.
Letting the silly jocks introduce socialism by name, and agree to it reluctantly in exchange for sex—rather than having the earnest, organized girls declare themselves openly and seriously in favor of socialism—feels like a deliberate narrative choice, and if it is, it’s a clever one. Introducing socialism in an offhanded, funny way makes the concept more palatable to an audience that’s been wired by decades of propaganda to see socialism as inherently dangerous and doomed. The script even brings up the classic “what about China/Venezuela/the Soviet Union” canard, but then allows it to be shot down by the well-read Grizz. This is simply not done on mainstream American television, or at least quite rarely. (...)
Time and again, the teens are portrayed as kids who are just trying to do what’s right, despite the evils they’ve inherited, and the general lack of creative solutions available to them from the old world. A review in Variety insists that “despite—or maybe thanks to—their best efforts, [the teens’] attempts to make a revolutionary new order end up looking an awful lot like the more rigid, heteronormative one in which they all grew up.” This is of course, exactly the point—it is very difficult for the teens to shed the awful attitudes they’ve been raised with. Grizz, who finally comes out as gay, says to Sam, his semi-closeted sort-of boyfriend, “We might be in a new fucking universe and we also might starve in here. How do you want to live, Sam?” He’s referring to their sexuality, but also of course to the entire situation; the teens have arrived in a new world, and they can make choices. Those choices are constrained by the history of the old world they brought with them, but at the same time, they can still choose how they want to live.
The repeat misunderstandings of the show’s depth by its critics are not surprising: Its political orientation is atypical, plus its admitted aesthetic flaws (too many characters, frequently portentous dialogue, a slow second half) obscure a lot of its real thoughtfulness and originality. What The Society is trying to do is fundamentally hard. It’s asking a question many people are asking themselves right now in a time of frightening upheaval: How do we want to live? And it’s asking it in the context of emergency. The teens have arrived in a strange, unknowable world that could hurt them suddenly and inexplicably. In the longer term, their resources are also running out. The feeling of living in a familiar place suddenly turned dangerous and mysterious is a clear echo of climate change anxiety; by the end of the season, the teens have realized they will probably have to transform from comfortable house-dwelling suburbanites into grubby farmers. Their lives are going to be difficult, physically taxing, and utterly different from the ones their parents led. Judging by the current dire climate predictions and the difficulty of halting global capitalism’s runaway carbon emissions, this is probably going to be the case for our real-world teens also.
by Lyta Gold, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: John Biggs
